What to do with the miles from your £1,275 Etihad Australia ticket? BA Bronze benefits for a start

These include business class to Australia on an A380 from as little as £1,275 (starting in Istanbul) or £1,400 from Dusseldorf. There are also some excellent fares out of London such as £1,100 to Abu Dhabi.

Etihad is not a British Airways partner so you can’t credit them to BA Executive Club. You will earn about 25,000 miles return to Sydney (Z class tickets earn 115% of miles flown) – here are a few options for how to use them.

Credit to Etihad Guest and redeem for cash via PointsPay

Etihad lets you cash out your miles for, well, cash. This is via a virtual Visa card system called PointsPay which I covered here. You will get about 0.4p per mile.

Etihad has family accounts – see here – allowing you to pool the miles from other people travelling with you. This will give you a decent mileage pool and far more flexibility when redeeming.

Credit to another airline

wheretocredit.com shows which airlines will give you credit for a Z class fare on Etihad. There are 14 options!

If you don’t want to credit to Etihad, SAS may be an option as you could top up your balance using American Express Membership Rewards points. SAS allows you to redeem across all of the Star Alliance airlines.

Credit to airberlin and get British Airways Bronze equivalent

airberlin is partly owned by Etihad and is also a member of the oneworld alliance. This means that:

you can redeem airberlin miles on British Airways and

if you have airberlin status, you can use it to enter BA lounges or get other BA status benefits

As you can see here, airberlin topbonus Silver status requires you to earn 25,000 status miles. You should get that from an Australia business class return with Etihad, given that you receive 115% of miles flown. topbonus Silver gives you the same benefits on BA as a BA Bronze card – you don’t get lounge access but you would get free seat selection seven days before departure, priority boarding and use of BA’s business class check-in desks.

If you were thinking of booking one of the Etihad deals, I hope these ideas convince you that the miles will not be wasted!

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Comments

Rob, any ideas with what to do with about 5500 miles from Emirates? I am not expecting further flights on them in the foreseeable future. Reaching 6000 would be great as this would allow converting into Heathrow Rewards voucher. However, buying the missing 500 costs too much.

That was a lot of research Rob, thank you. The AB is best for us as you could end up banking 50k miles on one trip. That’s a lot of RFS trips to have earned and a great price to Oz. Will be looking for a similar deal next year to AKL ex EU, to visit family.

I booked a one-way ticket for friends from Vienna to Malaga, using their topbonus account. I believe they paid 50 pounds in taxes. Had I used BAEC, it would have been about 25. The point is that it doesn’t matter what BA have done to fuel surcharges, since Polly isn’t using BA. From these Etihad flights, you’ll be getting topbonus points and using them for short-haul flights. So the BA charges have nothing to do with it, presumably…

OT But has anyone ever flown the afternoon iberia flight from MAD to LHR that they use the A330/340 in economy? I know you get flat beds and better service in business but what is it like in the back? Is the cabin quite empty? Do you still have to pay for everything? I just think I may fall a little short on the avios required to book it in business.

Also, what would the situation be if I was delayed on my reward flight into Madrid from New York and missed this? There’s around 6 hours which seems more than enough as long as nothing goes wrong. Or is it worth having a night in Madrid to be safe?

If you book it as a through flight, Iberia will let you select business for the long haul then economy for the short haul for example, meaning you only pay one set of taxes and guarantee they will look after you if your first flight is late.

Regarding the A330 to MAD in Economy: I was on this flight (booked as BA516) last friday and it was not very full. I even spotted a few rows in the back with all four middle seats empty. Not what I expected on a friday night. And yes, IB lets you pay for all snacks and drinks. But the good news is plenty of movies/TV for a short flight.
Business was completely full, I was told when I tried to upgrade.

I’m about to book some flights on flybe via avios.com. First time redeeming on flybe so do I get baggage included and also free seat selection? Or is it only baggage free but pay for seat selection? I’m back to blue on ba

Does anyone put much of a value of BA bronze? I could just about reach it this year if I booked multi sector American Airlines routing in domestic first class but obviously it would cost me more money than flying economy or with a different airline.

I tend to fly mainly HBO flights when I pay for flights with BA so I think the advance seat selection would be of limited use to me, ditto the business class check in.

Yep ME & harry are deeply, darkly alien to each other, the only place out there I might ever willingly set foot in would be Oman but I think I’ll give continental Africa & protruding bits a massive miss for the rest of my life (connecting flights on an ex-EU excluded 🙂 ).

I’m flying Emirates LHR-DXB-SYD-DXB-LHR next week (business class), all legs booked as QF codeshares. I’m crediting to BAEC and am BA Gold, will there be Gold tier and cabin bonus Avios awarded as if I were flying on BA metal?

OT. Aspire t5 victim of own success? Just tried to get in with PP but was told it was full, people were coming out but when mentioned agent pointed to about 20 pax sat on benches outside, “there next in”. Back to galleries then, only wanted to try out new PP !

Who on earth would queue up on a bench outside a lounge? I can only imagine this if I had a really long layover and if the lounge was exceptional. It just shows how much pent up demand there is for decent lounges at T5.

Flying back today on a nearly full plane, we had 3 window seats (in a column) & 1 middle joined to one of the window seats. ALL 3 of us with possible neighbours managed to get vacant seats next to us, which is obviously better than the alternative if you like a bit of space.

My only status these days is a scant few TPs and I’m just a bluey. But I would have been one of the very first to check in @ T-24hrs. I always stick my membership number in, even if (as today) we’re just flying RFS redemptions. Do I have any kind of status that would give me those empty adjoining seats?

Or was it because BA don’t like to sit strangers next to kids? (Though they are not so young: 11, 13, 15.)

I would not claim those miles to SAS. You need a decent amount of miles to actually buy something.
You would be better off claiming to Etihad. For instance Etihad is partner with VA and therefore you could fly from Brisbane to Nadi (Fiji) for as little as 11667miles one way in Y or Perth to Christmas Island in Y 11232 or even Brisbane-Honiara for 9145 in Y. In case you do not have enough EY miles you can apply for MBNA credit card and top up.
The other interesting option is Europe to PPT in some dates is available for 40k AF and 120 EUR and you can claim to AF (partnership with EY) and top up using amex points. Come on Rob make some effort !